When Americans are worried about losing their jobs, their savings, their homes and their chance at the American Dream, Congress and the president must work together to lift our economy and restore hope. That is the course the New Direction Congress will continue in the days and weeks ahead.

There are the fundamental core values of the Democratic Party, which is to work to grow the economy, to create jobs, to encourage small business, to encourage ownership, to expand access to quality health care, to enhance opportunity by making higher education more affordable to American's young people, to have our children live in safe neighborhoods, drug-free, crime-free, and a safe and clean environment, first and foremost to provide for the national defense, to protect and defend the American people, and to have accountability for our budget and for our spending.

Jobs are central to the American dream - and President Obama has focused on jobs from day one.

If you're talking about competing with countries in the industrialized, developed world, they don't have healthcare costs. Their societies have that as a priority. Here in America, we won't have the same kind of healthcare availability because it's still a private sector initiative. But that's O.K. because it's facilitated to be made more affordable in a public way.

In our recovery package we put new standards of accountability and transparency, which we hope will now apply.

I would do almost anything Tina Fey asks me to do.

If I cry, it's about the personal loss of a friend or something like that. But when it comes to politics - no, I don't cry.